Album

This is the first set of tracks I’ve recorded with the band – at Church Road Studio here in Brighton, earlier this year – loud and (pretty much) live. There’s also an acoustic song featuring Mik Hanscomb on 12-string guitar: you get the whole spectrum in this EP’s 20min run-time.

It’s available in all the usual online places from 8th Nov, but you can hear a preview of the longest, strangest track on the player above.

Thanks to GBHBL, who not only interviewed me following the LP release, but published some track-by-track notes that I wrote about it.

Interview link here. “I ended up in Brighton, like so many drug burn-outs and rejects from the capital, and got my act together. The music, hopefully, takes care of itself.”

Track by track here. “I once had an idea for a live show at the Brighton Fringe Festival but couldn’t work out how to do it without somebody getting killed … This turned into a song… which is one of the most upbeat things I’ve written“.

Thanks very much for kind words on the Vanishing Island album, from Brighton Source: “a prolific songwriter with an array of excellent self-produced independent releases. He’s influenced by the darker side of indie rock, but puts his own stamp on things […] strong and well-structured, with a memorable and distinctive sound”.

Yes, that title’s a dig at Brexit, but there are no overt protest songs this time round: these are complex emotions, for complex times… The kind of feelings that don’t even have names – but you know them when they hit home.

I’m very happy with this one, and hope it’s as enjoyable a listening experience as it was to make.

Like this:

There’s another EP coming out later this year – Fri 19 Oct – which is the opposite half of the picture to the abrasive, noise-heavy protest songs on Ugly Scene. The clue’s in the title: Disquiet – a mellow slab of grandeur and weirdness. Till then, got gigs coming up next month and more in Sept-Nov (a mixture of solo and electric band nights, details to follow). These are the nearest few dates:

Out today: the loudest and most obnoxious set of recordings I’ve done in quite a while – it felt like that kind of time again. The follow-up, hopefully due later this year, is already finished and takes a different angle… it’s called Disquiet. But for now, hope you enjoy these dispatches from the feedback frontier x

Like this:

The 13th August update of Unpeeled has very positive things to say about Glow in the Dark – “once in a blue one, you come across something of genuine interest”, for a start – and I’ve taken the liberty of quoting the entire review somewhere on here. Go to the site, though, it’s all good writing (and they clearly have excellent taste).

Tomorrow sees the first date of MINOTAUR – South Seas Live in Sheffield. Facebook pg for that specific gig here.

Two more reviews for Glow in the Dark, first from Stu Huggett in Brighton Source magazine:

…And second from Ringmaster Reviews, here. An ambivalent one, this – “at times not easy to get a handle on”, but “to ignore it would be a mistake”… and “a sinister caress with less than healthy intentions which leaves one rattled but needing to feel its shadows again”(!). Still, it’s in-depth, which is aces with me. And uncertainty isn’t a bad thing… I’ve evoked some colourful images in the writer’s head: my work is done.

The video to my next single, Hard Science (released on Light Crude 28 May) can be viewed above. It was a lot of fun, albeit very fragmented, to make – not the least difficult was finding a vicar’s collar that fit comfortably and didn’t slip out to the side like a broken bone. Anyway, now I know how those evangelicals feel: drunk and throbbing with THE POWER OF THE LORD.

Episodes is on sale again from tomorrow, via Bandcamp and – shortly afterwards – iTunes, Amazon & all that bunch.

Not only does it include Kafka Song and the hidden spoken-word track from the original CD, but also 3 extra tunes (one of them exclusive to Bandcamp). It’s been unavailable for a long time due to problems with the original distributors which I won’t go into here – suffice to say a repeat appearance is long overdue. Check it out.